This has got to stop.

I am rabidly anti-artificial-sweetener.  I’m not quite to the point of a whole family—it was almost like their personal religion—I used to know who got on such a rampage that they would write “TOXIC” on Equal packets in restaurants, but it’s definitely something I (usually) am pretty adamant about.

Thing is, aspartame, sucralose, and the like really are bad for you.  I’m not riding any kind of moral/pc high horse here, but it doesn’t take a medical degree to know that ingesting straight chemicals that we don’t know the effects of yet on a daily basis is not going to be your best idea.  There are some crazy people out there who decry them, yes, but there’s a glut of legitimate research that says you might want to think twice.

Dunno, just Google it and see for yourself.  As for me and my house, we avoid the stuff.

Except for this week.  I’ve had a Diet Coke almost every day this week.

I’m not sure you understand the significance of this.  I don’t take many stands regarding food.  Obviously.  I’m currently cutting back on sweets, and I hope to keep it that way, but if I ended up needing some peanut butter M&Ms at some point, I wouldn’t feel like I’d betrayed a personal principle.  (I’d just feel, briefly, like a fat failure, but I’d get over it after once I’d sunk my teeth into approximately 5 colorful candy shells.)

Beyond that, though, artificial sweetener actually does me physical harm.  I identified it as a migraine trigger a while back, and I quit it on the spot.  For a while there, just the thought of that weird fake-tasting bite almost gave me a headache.  With that and all the other risks, it’s just not been worth it to me.

I haven’t had anything diet—i.e., containing artificial sweetener—in months.  In fact, though I don’t recall the exact time frame, I remember the last time I had a diet drink.  It was months ago, at least—another weird craving.  Before that, it had been several months as well.

For me, and mock me all you want, drinking a Diet Coke is roughly equivalent to being a vegetarian and eating a hamburger.  I just haven’t been able to stop myself these past few days.  I’ve had four.

I don’t know what to do about this.  Obviously, I don’t need to keep drinking them.  I don’t want to reverse all the progress I’ve made with my migraines.  So, I’ll stop.  I hope the weird craving goes away so it will be easier to do so.

Feel-good Friday: “Can’t Buy Me Love,” The Beatles

Because November is for Beatles, and because I think I’ve mentioned I’m poor, and because Nate-dawg came over last Saturday night to watch this and it always leaves me smiling for days afterward, here.  Have the cutest boys ever frolicking.  I almost can’t stand it.

Tight regrets.

I got some tights a few days ago.  I don’t like pantyhose.  They’re restrictive and confining and, sometimes, they cause actual pain.  They gather into unfortunate locations and create unfortunate silhouettes.

Tights, though, are warm and soft and nice.  They’re like a sweet little all-day hug for your legs.  Plus, tights are what you wear when you’re a little girl—they go especially well with a dress your mom made you that has a twirly skirt.

I like wearing skirts, and I like—right about the time the leaves are halfway off the trees and Christmas lights start appearing (too early, to my chagrin)—to wear tights with said skirts.

It appears I chose the wrong ones today.  I was going for something like this—thick, soft, opaque.  I mean, they said “sweater tights” on the label.  I’m expecting sweaters for my legs.  I was going to wear my favorite skirt and my favorite shoes today, along with a soft taupe-ish long-sleeved tee shirt.  I was running late, and this was going to be frump-comfort express.

Apparently, though, in this case, “sweater” referred to the pattern, not the comfort element.  I mean, they’re not uncomfortable, but they’re not sweaters.

And they’re NOT opaque.  Basically what I have here is a glorified pair of fishnet hose.  In a hurry this morning, though, and still looking through the filter of the whole “sweater” paradigm, I didn’t think they were too far off of my original intention.  Looking down at my legs now, though, it’s painfully obvious why I’ve been getting certain, er…reactions.

I’m slightly naive.  Not sure if you know that.

So, basically what I have here is the outfit of a tired spinster with a not-so-secret and more-embarrassing-than-she-realizes Moulin Rouge fantasy.

Anyway.  I’ve gotten comments all day.  The secret exhibitionist in me knows she should be taking pleasure in this, but the rest of me is slightly mortified.  I mean, one boy meowed and clawed the air like a cat; I got an actual wink from another.  I’m not exactly a fashion maven anyway, but my unfortunate choice today has slightly different implications than usual.

To cheer us (or maybe just me) up.

It’s like this:  I have no money.  And I’m about to have to spend a lot more money.  Details forthcoming.  There is an end in sight and, Lord willing, I’m going to actually make money in my next career.  That’s very far away.

I’m wigging out.  I’ve made the best decisions I’ve known how to make at the time, whether they were the “right” ones or not.  I’ve not been frivolous…most of the time, anyway, and never excessively so.  I’m just very tired of not being able to afford, well, much of anything, and of always having my job/financial situation up in the air.  True, I’m not the best with commitment, but some financial stability for once would be worth it.

I’ll be fine.  Times like this, though, make me even more escapist even than I usually am.  And you know how I’d like to escape.

Right now, even if I were so poor I’d have to live out of my Airstream, I’d actually be so poor I couldn’t afford an Airstream to live out of.  Someday, though, I’ll be happy to be that kind of “poor.”

The thought makes me happy, as does the pic.  As does this song.

An argh of a day.

They told us that we could let ourselves process the day’s events here at work how we wanted to.  A couple of options thrown out were “walk outside for a few minutes” and “stare at the screen for 10 minutes.”

I think blogging counts, right?

I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say, the recession sucks, and bureaucracy sucks mullets.  I’m so thankful I’m a contract worker.  I could have never dreamed how thankful I’d be.  My job is safe for its brief remainder, but others haven’t been so lucky.

At the same time, I realized today how emotionally attached I’ve become to my coworkers.  I really have, despite my complaining.  I’ve been blessed with some weird work situations in my life, but I almost always have been concurrently blessed with some great people to accompany me in said situations.  This was definitely one of them.

I totes need a hug today.

I think Tuesdays are proving to be the roughest in this new workandschool existence thing I’m doing.  Mondays, I’m a little more rested.  Thursdays, I’m worthless mentally by that evening’s class, but at least I know the next day’s Friday.  Tuesdays, I’m worn out from Monday, but the week has still just begun.

I wanted to see Leonid last night, but it was too cloudy.  Plus I’d have given up some of the few precious hours of sleep I got last night.

I apologize to the few people I communicated with today.  I was a bummer.

Wah wah wah, whatever.  I will say that some budgeting I did last night gave way to brief despair which gave way to outreaching, and it looks like at least a couple of things are on the horizon that will be improving quality of life (and maybe quality of blogging?) around these parts.  Stay tuned.

Connected.

The Comcastic doppelganger of Sean Penn as Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High came to see me today.  He brought his high-spirited, stringy-haired daughter.  They gave me the internet.

Thanks to my mom for providing financially for it.  No more parking lots!

The Box.

I just saw The Box and I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to do.

Okay, look.  It veers off into the ridiculous for a bit, perhaps…but perhaps not.  I don’t know.  I’m going to have to see it twelve more times before I can make that call.

You probably know I’m pretty obsessed with Donnie Darko.  In case you don’t know, Richard Kelly wrote both that and this.  I want to talk to him.  No, I don’t.

I just want to talk to someone.  This movie got me.  It was kind of slow-moving, as movies go, but to my mind, it was perfectly-paced.  It was nerve-wracking.  There were several of the elements of Darko, which lent an eerie familiarity (in one scene, when the main characters are scouring the library for some mysterious call numbers, I was dying for one of the numbers to be for Grandma Death’s book; that might have been a little over the top, though).

Beyond that, though, there was a major Twilight Zone feel; what I was not expecting, though, was the overpowering X Files feel.  And I mean the old-school, first-three-seasons-before-it-got-so-conspiracied-out, CREEPY X Files era.  (Ask me—or anyone I was friends with in high school—about my David Duchovny fixation.  But that’s a story for another time.)

So basically, the Twilight Zone and the X Files had a baby that grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock movies and then made out with David Lynch a couple of times during a youthful dalliance.  And then was granted entrance through a watery portal into the Darkosphere.  That baby grew up to be this movie.

You may hate it, and I don’t care.  I haven’t been riveted by a thriller like this in a long time.  And there’s no—or at least very little—cursing or sex.  Go figure.

Feel-good Friday: “Sleepwalker,” the Wallflowers.

Doin’ a little breaktime-from-class, parking-lot blogging.

I was pretty sure back in high school that I would have to marry Jakob Dylan.  He was so sleepydreamy, and his last name had five letters, one of them being a ‘y’, just like my names do.  It would fit right in.

I loved the Wallflowers back then.  When they came out with an album my very last semester of undergrad in college, I snapped that puppy right up, and Erin and I put Jakob on our Door of Beautiful Men.  “Sleepwalker” was my favorite.  I was fond of playing it—loudly—and singing—loudly—the line “I’m an educated virgin” with a smirk on my face.

(Interpret said smirk however you choose, there.)

For whatever reason, that song has been in my head for a couple of days.  I think, possibly, it could be because I feel like a sleepwalker of late.  (Have I mentioned I don’t get as much sleep as I’d like?)

I think this means it’s my Feel-Good Friday this week.  Enjoy.

Crying over spilled mocha.

I did not have money to go to Starbucks this morning.  I don’t most mornings, but some people are able to, and I like to pretend I’m one of them every once in a while.  This is the case especially on mornings like this when I have to come in early for a 7:30am phone call to a nice lady from a Kentucky county’s Board of Education.

I just thought I could use a little treat, especially since I needed the caffeine—I’ve probably gotten about ten hours sleep, total, since Sunday night.  How do I afford my rock and roll lifestyle?  I don’t.  I’m just doing the best I can, here, folks.

I had $6 and some change in my wallet.  With that and some more change from my little ashtray compartment in my car, I scraped together $7.21 for a breakfast sandwich—which, surprisingly, are pretty good, though I was adamantly opposed to them at first—and a grande nonfat, no-whip mocha.

It was the mocha that I really wanted.  I just knew it didn’t need to hit an empty stomach by itself.

I cannot stress enough how much I know I shouldn’t have spent the last of my cash for the week (Friday is payday) on Starbucks.  But you gotta eat breakfast.  And I really wanted that mocha.

In the left turn from 24th onto Acklen, it was driven home very nauseatingly just how neglectful I’d been in replacing the cupholder that disappeared this past week.  Without it, the little circular indention I’d placed said mocha in just didn’t have the ability to enclose and protect its precious cargo.

The cargo that emptied itself completely—devastatingly—onto my passenger side floor mat.

The floor mat that is now lying on the ground, probably souring, out in the parking lot beside my car.

I shouldn’t have spent the money on the mocha.  I was going to enjoy it, though, without guilt.  I was going to nurse it all morning, probably–the nurturing dark chocolate, the seductive espresso roast, both of which I so needed.  So craved.

I would probably have even sighed and stared into the distance contentedly at some point.

The breakfast sandwich was good.  It would have been better washed down with a mocha.

I’m going to get over this now.  (Hold me.)

UPDATE, 12:30pm:  Our Big Corporate Dude We Report To graced us with his presence today.  Along with him brought he cupcakes.  It wasn’t a mocha, but the gingerbread one was pretty fantastic, and I will go ahead and consider it a serendipitous override.

My life, in boxes.

You’d think I were moving.  Again.  Nope.  Just still sifting through all the belongings my folks brought by on their way out of town.  Working full-time and going to school three nights a week (and church one night a week) is not exactly conducive to such productivity.

It’s weird to have all my worldly possessions under one roof, finally.

P.S.  I miss having a real camera.  These cell phone captures just do not cut it.